{"id":958,"date":"2010-03-03T16:19:21","date_gmt":"2010-03-03T16:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=958"},"modified":"2010-03-06T17:20:33","modified_gmt":"2010-03-06T17:20:33","slug":"poor-little-rich-gays-mark-claude-purcell%e2%80%99s-sad-passing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=958","title":{"rendered":"Poor Little Rich Gays Mark Claude Purcell\u2019s Sad&nbsp;Passing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday 3<sup>rd<\/sup> March 2010<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago I mentioned that something had happened, a sad thing and a timely reminder. Claude Purcell, the music critic, had a catastrophic heart attack in the street and died. Only 60. I haven\u2019t been able to believe it.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday was the funeral. I didn\u2019t know Claude very well and wondered whether he qualified as a Poor Little Rich Gay, which is why you won\u2019t have heard of him here before. But it turns out, now it\u2019s too late, that he did.<\/p>\n<p>I collected Bruce MacBain, my architect and one of Claude\u2019s many friends, at 10.15 and we set out by bus for London\u2019s Central. Bruce had a loose thread but needed little other tidying. Quite often he is covered in builders\u2019 dust. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve got across that in some ways he is a small boy. I wore my best Prada boots, for, say it myself as shouldn\u2019t, Claude liked nice things. At the church, Robert Nevil and Sebastian Archer had already arrived and Reggie Cresswell came in later, lucky to get a seat. Leon de Veer, Miles Kent and Tristan Pasco, the radio announcer, as well as other friends,by coincidence, of Anthony Mottram, were there. Harry Rollo not present, but his Aunt Dora was.<\/p>\n<p>Well, it was a proper funeral. Marvellou<sup><\/sup>s early 18th century church, some simple, plain white elements, the floor somehow dynamic, thrusting out to the sides but a grand, solemn altarpiece of carved wood; \u00a0haunting, sad, sad music played by the pianist, Asako Ogawa and the cellist, Nikolay Ginov, who got there in the nick of time; \u00a0the coffin borne in on men\u2019s shoulders, no horrible trolley; the Book of Common Prayer; \u2018He who would valiant be\u2019 and the Mariners\u2019 Hymn to finish, \u2018Eternal Father, strong to save\u2019; the whole thing lasting no more than 35 minutes, as is right.<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t know whether Claude was a believer. Maybe not the point, but this was much more than good taste. Distinguished, exceptional, personal, in this funeral I felt that I knew him more than in life. \u00a0One remarkable and unconventional address was given by a recently discovered nephew and the other by an old friend and well-known children\u2019s book illustrator. So Claude, freely, made\u00a0 his life out of his passions and enthusiasms \u2013 for the Silver Screen, the Music Hall, 20<sup>th<\/sup> century German and French music. At the age of eight, he set out alone across London to visit the Music Hall legend, Ida Barr, whom he had somehow got in touch with. He championed the forgotten and the obscure, as she might by then have been. It has now emerged, he secretly treasured his table settings, photographing each one before the guests destroyed it. And they were astonishing, believe me, I was there a couple of times; quite the best. Old damask and heaps of assorted antique glasses, perhaps some wild flowers, the magic impossible to recapture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wednesday 3rd March 2010 A few weeks ago I mentioned that something had happened, a sad thing and a timely reminder. Claude Purcell, the music critic, had a catastrophic heart attack in the street and died. Only 60. I haven\u2019t been able to believe it. Yesterday was the funeral. I didn\u2019t know Claude very well [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":964,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions\/964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}